The black gryphon

by Mercedes Lackey

  And as a Trondi’irn should know, vero-grass was thick with minerals; someone with a back injury was in need of minerals.

  She accepted the cup of tea dubiously, waved aside his offer of honey to sweeten it, and took a sip. Her eyes widened as she recognized what it was, but she said nothing; she simply gulped it down.

  Grimly, he thought. As if she dared him to do his worst.

  Well, he wouldn’t do his worst, he would do his best, and to hell with her and her opinions.

  “I’d like you to disrobe, please,” he said, taking the cup away from her and placing it out of the way. “And lie on the table.”

  Winterhart had not known until she stepped into this tent that Urtho had ordered her to the hands of a kestra’chern. But she knew Amberdrake by sight-it seemed that he was always messing about with the Healers and the gryphons in one way or another-and she knew what his profession was.

  She had thought she was being sent to a minor, unGifted Healer for her back problems-on Urtho’s direct orders of course, and after that rather painful interview following the altercation with Zhaneel. How the Mage had wormed the fact of her injury out of her, she had no idea.

  Then again, she had told him any number of things that she hadn’t intended to, and that was only one of them. At least the fact of the injury and the pain she was in had apparently saved her from a reprimand; Urtho evidently counted it as a reason for her irritation with the world in general and gryphons specifically.

  When he had told her that-and that he was ordering her to get treatment that he himself would schedule, she had been resentful, but just a little relieved.

  Now she was resentful, not at all relieved, angry-and truth to tell, more than a little frightened. Angry that Urtho had set her up like this without telling her. Resentful that he had interfered in her private life, arbitrarily assuming that there was something wrong with her sexual relations and setting her up with a kestra’chern.

  And frightened of what could happen at the hands of this particular kestra’chern.

  She had heard very embarrassing things about kestra’chern in general and this Amberdrake in particular, stories that would curl the hair of any well-born young woman with a sense of decency. Amberdrake had a reputation for things that were rather-exotic. Conn Levas had used the fact that he had gone to this particular kestra’chern to taunt her with her inadequacies, and the things he had said had gone on here were considerably more than exotic.

  And worst of all, she had no clue what Urtho had ordered for her . . . treatment.

  If anyone back in her wing found out she was here, she would never hear the end of it.

  And her back still hurt! That was reason enough to wish herself elsewhere!

  The gods only know what’s going to happen to my back if-if- She found herself flushing and resenting her own embarrassment. A lot of arching would be very bad for my spine right now. And I doubt he has any notion of that.

  Her suspicions hardened into certainty when she recognized the taste of the vero-grass tea. It was a calmative, yes, but it also had a reputation for enhacing other things than calm. But it was a muscle relaxant as well, and right now. . . .

  Right now, my back needs it badly enough that I’ll drink the damned stuff, she thought grimly. Maybe he thinks that if he drugs me enough, I’ll be too limp to stop him. Huh. Not with this back. One cup of tea isn’t going to do worse than take the edge off the pain.

  Then he looked at her as if he was sizing her up for purchase, and said, “Disrobe and get on the table, please.”

  She stared at him, utterly taken aback, as much by his clinical coldness as by the words. Wasn’t there supposed to be some-well-finesse involved here?

  She looked from Amberdrake to the table, and back again. “You want me to what?” she asked, still stunned.

  Amberdrake sighed with exasperation. What was wrong with the stupid woman? Couldn’t she understand that in order to massage her he would have to have her unclothed and on the table? Surely she didn’t think he could do anything with her standing in the middle of the room like a statue!

  “You are who Urtho sent me, aren’t you?” he asked, with just a touch of irony.

  She swallowed, but with difficulty. “Yes-“ she replied.

  “And you do have a back injury, do you not?” he persisted. What was going on in her mind?

  She answered with more reluctance than before. “Yes-“

  He sighed with open exasperation, which seemed to annoy her. Well, good. Up until this moment, he’d been the one who was annoyed. Let her enjoy the sensation for a change. “Then please, lady, let me help you, as I was assigned to do. I cannot help you if you will not disrobe and get on the table.”

  “Help me how?” she replied sharply, her eyes darting this way and that. “I thought I was being sent to a Healer!”

  He gritted his teeth so hard it hurt. “You have been sent to a Healer,” he replied, allowing his tone to tell her that there was no doubt that he was exasperated. “Apparently, you are not aware that a human cannot be effectively massaged through her clothing. If you would rather this were done by someone other than myself, you are quite free to leave. But you can explain to Urtho why you walked out on this rather expensive session. I perform my services in a professional manner, even with reluctant clients-and the services I intended to perform on you are entirely different from the ones I think you have imagined.”

  Beneath his calm, cool exterior he was seething, and his back teeth jammed so tightly together that it was a wonder they didn’t split. Another gods-be-damned, pure-as-rain Healer. I should have known she’d react this way. Tamsin and Cinnabar were only too accurate in the way they described her. Bright Keros, how much more am I going to have to put up with this kind of nonsense? I’m besieged, truly I am!

  And as for Winterhart the Pure-well, from the pinched look on her face, I’d say she’s certainly living down to her reputation as the Princess of Prim and Proper.

  She hadn’t budged a thumblength since he’d begun talking, and if his muscle readings were correct, she was so tense that he was rather mildly surprised that her eyes weren’t bulging out.

  And it was all too obvious that she not only didn’t believe he was a Healer, she was certain it was just some kind of a ploy to take advantage of her.

  As if I’d want to. I like my partners willing, thank you.

  His headache worsened. Wonderful. It wasn’t just his headache, it was coming from her as well. No wonder she had a pinched and sour look to her.

  Now how do I convince her that I am a Healer? Chop off Gesten’s hand and fuse it back on? I wonder if Her Majesty the Ice-Maiden here would even react to that! She and that steel-necked lover of hers deserve each other. If Urtho hadn’t sent her to me, I’d invite her to take herself and her token back to her tent.

  But outwardly, years of practice kept so much as a stray expression from crossing his face. “I am no threat to your-virtue-and I do assure you that you can relax. This is a massage table. I am to work on your back injury, and perhaps see if it is something that I can Heal. It is that simple.” He patted the table and smiled a cool and professional smile.

  She shifted her weight uneasily and moved ever so slightly away from the tent flap and toward the table.

  If that’s the best she can do, we’re going to be here all night before she gets on the damned table!

  “Massage,” he repeated, as if to a very simple child. “I am very good at it. Lady Cinnabar will not have anyone else work on her but me.”

  That earned him another couple of steps toward the table; he closed his eyes for just a moment, and counted to ten. She was turning what should have been a simple session into an ordeal for both of them!

  “If you are body-shy with a stranger, I will turn my back while you disrobe. You may drape yourself with the sheet that is folded beside the table,” he said; he pointed out the sheet to her, and turned away.

  The sound of clothing rustling told him that he had finally
convinced her of his sincerity, if not his expertise.

  His head was absolutely pounding with shared pain; he shielded himself against her, and it finally ebbed a bit. That was a shame. He generally didn’t need to shield himself against a fellow-Healer, and allowing his Empathy to remain wide-open generally got him some useful information. Remaining that way also improved his sensitivity to what was going on with injuries and pain and helped him block it; before a client even realized that something hurt, he would be able to correct the problem and move on.

  Correct the problem. Well. Unfortunately, he could very well imagine why Urtho had sent the woman here. The few notes he had on her indicated some trauma in her life that she simply had not faced-something that she had done or that had been done to her. Trondi’irn were generally not so busy they disregarded their own health. There was the possibility she was punishing herself by leaving her conditions unattended, or worsening them in her mind. Oh, he had no doubt that there was a real, physical injury there as well, but the way she acted told him that this was not a healthy, well-adjusted woman. Urtho must have seen that, too; here was the implied message in his sending her here.

  You’re supposed to Heal minds, so Heal this one.

  What had Urtho said about her?

  That she had abusive parents. But the signs are all wrong for them to have been physically abusive. . . .

  Urtho was known for having a very enlightened idea of what constituted “abuse.”

  No, this woman hadn’t been mistreated or neglected physically. But emotionally-ah, there was the theory that fit the pattern.

  I would bet a bolt of silk on cold, demanding parents, who expected perfection-and got it. Very little real affection in her life, and most of it delivered when she managed, somehow, to achieve the impossible goals her parents set. Yes, that fits the picture.

  And now, she was as demanding of everyone else as her parents had been to her. More than that, she was as demanding of herself as they used to be.

  Well, that was why she would have gotten involved with an arrogant manipulator like that mage in the first place. She doesn’t see herself as “deserving” anyone who cares, so she picks someone who reminds her of what she grew up with. And then treats him the same, since she never learned to do otherwise.

  He ran his fingers across his forehead as the creaking of the table behind him told him he had managed to convince her to trust him that far. I can’t undo decades of harm in a few candlemarks. Start with the easy stuff and release the pain. Then take it from there.

  Amberdrake turned back to find her on her stomach, draped from neck to knee with the sheet, as modest as a village maiden. He selected one of the oils, one with a lavender base; that would be clean and fresh enough to help convince her that he was not going to seduce her. Then, before she could react, he turned the sheet down with brisk efficiency worthy of Gesten, poured some of the oil in his hands to warm it, then rubbed his palms together. A moment later, he was kneading the muscles of her back and shoulders.

  He had not been boasting; he was particularly good at massage. Lady Cinnabar did prefer his services to anyone else in or out of the camp. Slowly, as he worked the knots of tension out of her back and shoulders, he sensed other tension ebbing. His expertise at massage was convincing her that he was, at least in part, what he claimed to be.

  Some of the barriers she was holding against him came down. But he did not take immediate advantage of the altered situation.

  No, my dear Icicle; I intend to show you that I am everything I said I was and a lot more besides.

  You are a challenge. And I never could resist a challenge. And Urtho, damn his hide, knows that.

  When Winterhart realized that the man really did know what he was doing-at least insofar as massage was concerned-she let the fear ebb from her body. The more she relaxed, the more his hands seemed to be actually soothing away the pain in her poor back.

  Odd. I always thought massage was supposed to be painful. . . .

  In fact, it was so soothing that she felt herself drifting away, not quite asleep, but certainly not quite awake. Several moments passed before she realized that the tingling sensation in her back really was something very familiar, after all. The difference was that she had never experienced it before as the recipient.

  Her eyes opened wide although she did not move. She didn’t dare. The man was Healing her, and you didn’t interrupt a Healing trance!

  “Well,” came the conversational voice from behind her. “You certainly have broken up your back in a most spectacular fashion.”

  He was talking! How could you trance and talk at the same time?

  “Your main problem is with one of the pads between the vertebrae,” the voice continued. “It’s squashed rather messily. I’m putting back what I can; if I can get the inflammation down, that will clear the way to stop most of the pain you’ve been enduring.”

  “Oh-“ she replied, weakly. “I’d thought perhaps that I had cracked a vertebra.”

  “Nothing nearly so exciting,” the voice replied. “But this could have been worse. It is good that Urtho sent you to me when he did. Do you feel any tension here. . . ?”

  Winterhart felt a spot of cold amid the sea of warmth in her back. This man was amazing; the Healers she knew could activate the nerves in a specific point of the body, but never a specific sensation. By the time her training had been terminated, she could not activate a circle of nerves smaller than her thumb’s width without causing the patient to feel heat, cold, pressure, and pain there all at once. And here this-this kestra’chern-was pinpointing the nerves in a tenth of that area, and making her feel only a chill. Not pain!

  She could only grunt an affirmative and let her defenses slip a little more. He knew what he was doing, and he felt so competent, so good. . . .

  Amberdrake let the fluids around the damage balance slower than absolutely necessary, partly out of caution but mostly to buy some more time.

  This was not going to be as easy as he had thought.

  Winterhart was like an onion; you peeled away one layer, thinking you had found the core, only to find just another layer. She had so many defenses, that he was forced to wonder just what it was she thought she was defending herself against.

  “How did you manage to do this?” he asked quietly, letting the soothing qualities he put into his voice lull her a little more. “This kind of injury doesn’t usually happen all at once; didn’t you notice anything wrong earlier?”

  “Well, my back had been bothering me for a while,” she replied with obvious reluctance, “but I never really thought about it. My fami-I’ve always had a little problem with my back, you know how it is, tensions always strike at your weakest point, right?”

  “True,” he replied, wondering why she had changed “my family” to “I.” How would revealing a family history of back trouble reveal anything about her? “And your back is your weakest point, I take it?” He thought carefully before asking his next question; he didn’t want to put her more on the defensive than she already was. “I suppose you must have seen how busy all the Healers were, and you decided just to ignore the pain. Not necessarily wise, but certainly considerate of you.”

  She grunted, and the skin on the back of her neck reddened a little. “I don’t like to whine about things,” she said. “Especially not things I can’t change. So I kept my mouth shut and drank a lot of willow. Anyway, after the defensive at Polda, one of the Sixth Wing gryphons was brought in with some extensive lacerations to its underbelly, delirious, and when I tried to restrain it, it nearly went berserk.”

  Interesting. Resentment there. As if she somehow thought that the gryphon in question had been acting unreasonably.

  “Who was it?” Amberdrake asked.

  “What are you talking about?” she replied suspiciously.

  “Who was the gryphon?” Amberdrake repeated mildly. “I knew about Aubri’s burns, but I didn’t know anything about a Sixth Wing gryphon with lacerations. I was wonderin
g if it was Sheran; if it was, I’m not surprised she reacted badly to being restrained. She was one of the gryphons that Third Wing rescued just before Stelvi Pass. Ma’ar had them all in chains and was going to pinion them. We don’t know what else he did tp them, but we do know they had been tortured in some fairly sophisticated and sadistic ways.”

  There. Make her think of the gryphon in question as a personality, and not an “it.” See what that unlocks.

  “It could have been,” Winterhart said slowly, as if the notion startled her. “There was a lot of scar tissue I couldn’t account for, and it was a female. . . .”

  Amberdrake probed the injury again, before he spoke. “Ma’ar saves some of his worst tortures for the gryphons. Urtho thinks it’s because Ma’ar knows he thinks of them as his children, not as simply his ‘creations.’ “

  “I didn’t know that.” Silence for a while, as the flames of the lanterns overhead burned with faint hissing and crackling sounds. “I like animals; I was always good with horses and dogs. That was why I became a Trondi’irn.”

  “Gryphons-‘ He started to say, “Gryphons aren’t animals,” then stopped himself just in time.

  “I thought gryphons were just animals, like the Kaled’a’in warhorses. I thought they only spoke like the messenger-birds . . . just mimicking without really understanding more than simple orders.” She sighed; the muscles of her back heaved and trembled a little beneath his hands, and he exerted his powers to keep them from going into a full and painful spasm. “I kept telling myself that, but it isn’t true. They aren’t just animals. I hate to see anything in pain, and it’s worse to see something that can think in a state like that gryphon was.”

  “Well,” Amberdrake replied, choosing,his words with care, “I’ve always thought it was worse to see an animal in pain than a creature like the hertasi, the gryphons, the kyree, or the tervardi injured. You can’t explain to an animal that you are going to hurt it a little more now to make it feel better later. You can explain those things to a thinking creature, and chances are it will believe you and cooperate. And it has always been worse, for me, to see an animal die-especially one that is attached to you. They’ve come to think of you as a kind of god, and expect you to make everything better-and when you can’t, it’s shattering, to have to betray that trust, even though you can’t avoid it.”